LYFT - NHS

Standalone mobile app and dashboard for non-emergency patient transport

  • Project: Concept

  • Team: Group

  • Duration: 2-week sprint on the General Assembly Immersive course

  • Date:  Jan, 2019

my role

  1. To create user journeys

  2. To conduct 5 interviews

  3. To summarise the findings of the affinity mapping

  4. To lead design studio and ideation session

  5. To create paper prototypes

  6. To create mid-fidelity wireframes using Sketch

  7. To conduct usability tests

  8. To walk through the journey in the presentation using Keynote and Invision

Opportunity

Lyft wants to offer a standalone app for booking and hailing rides to and from healthcare appointments, alongside its well-known private and shared rides.

The app would allow patients and carers to book rides, and a separate desktop app (dashboard) would let healthcare professionals manage them.

From an NHS perspective, the project is meant to reduce costs, make spending more transparent, improve patient no-show rate, and generally improve patient satisfaction.

Problem

Based on our user research, waiting for pickup is what degrades patient experience whether they use NHS’ own transportation, take a cab, or book an Uber. Patients, in many cases, are stressful, uncomfortable, and don’t know who to speak to about their transportation. (Esp. from appointment.) Both mobile and desktop apps have to focus on solving or pre-empting the waiting time issue.

Solution

We addressed waiting time by

  • Making sure the app integrates into Lyft’s existing API and infrastructure, making use of its advanced tracking capabilities

  • Making bookings vs. arrivals prominent in the NHS dashboard app

Result

Our high-fidelity prototype for the mobile app had the following features:

  • Registering patients using their NHS number

  • Appointments sync automatically to the NHS database.

  • Booking rides for self, or someone else; now, or for a later time.

  • Payment by patient or NHS

  • Changing and modifying bookings

The desktop dashboard app allows NHS staff to:

  • Look up and book / modify / cancel rides for patients

  • Get a high-level overview of relevant bookings

  • Track specific in-transit rides

process

The first week covered User interviews, Site visit, Affinity Mapping, Design Studio, User journey, and the first wireframes.

In the second week, we concluded the process with Usability Tests, 5 rounds of iterations, and finally presenting our work.

Discover & Research

Competitor Analysis

NHS trusts are either managing their transportation needs by themselves, or have some sort of arrangement with transportation companies.

Uber Health is one of the companies with plans to enter this space. They’re already training drivers to assist passengers, and offering the option to choose cars with wheelchair accessibility through the main Uber app.

Site visit

To get first-hand experience of non-emergency patient transportation, we visited the Royal London Hospital. These were our observations:

  • The Non-Emergency Patient Transportation Desk is on the first floor, despite many of those waiting were of reduced mobility, including wheelchair users.

  • The system gives the impression of a makeshift dispatch station; drivers shouting out the names of patients before leading them to the vehicle.

  • Patients experience long waiting times

  • There is no departure table, patients have no idea when they get to go.

Survey & Interviews

We sent out a survey, then conducted interviews with both patients and hospital staff. We were seeking answers to 4 questions:

  • How people without transportation get to / from healthcare appointments?

  • What are patients’ expectations, and what pain points they currently experience when taking a booked ride to appointments?

  • How could / should an app like Lyft / NHS integrate with existing NHS systems?

  • What’s the anticipated impact of the app on healthcare providers?

Personas

In creating our personas we settled on 3 different experiences. This way, we had the chance to work using a holistic approach.


Sketching & Ideation

Affinity mapping

We took the information we collected and subjected it to affinity mapping, which allowed us to distill them down to these key pain points:

  • Waiting times

  • High stress level

  • Communication

  • Comfort issues

Experience map

We compiled an experience map from the patient’s point of view, using existing NHS transportation services. Starting from booking a ride that takes her to the hospital and back on the day of the appointment.

Solution, part 1: The mobile app

Thinking about the best way to serve our 3 types of users, we decided on an app that would be designed around Peter’s needs but could easily be used by patients themselves if they were so inclined. Getting to a solid design of the standalone app has taken several paper prototypes, a long line of usability tests, countless iterations, and design studios.

I did the First paper prototype:

My role was to lead a design studio with my team. I asked every team member to create quick sketches for a happy journey we agreed on. Using timeboxing I asked them to vote for the favourite solutions, which allowed me to create the first flow. I really enjoy this method, because it makes our job extremely fast.

Second paper prototype:

High fidelity mockups:

Solution part 2: The Dashboard

Looking at the problem holistically, we couldn’t stop at just a mobile app for the patient or carer. We had to think of the NHS side, ie. how the app talks to GPs and hospitals. To this end, we also designed a Dashboard: a web app through which healthcare professionals may book, edit, and track rides.

Next steps

  • Managing multiple patients under “Patients”, synced with a calendar, in Dashboard. (Carer feature)

  • Shared tracking of the ride

  • Driver mode